


heartbeat hills and valleys

by greenbriars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Warm Bodies Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombies, London, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26283049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbriars/pseuds/greenbriars
Summary: Because misfortune comes in threes, the zombie apocalypse hits when Harry's on the Heathrow Express, he is forced to waste a heartbreaking amount of good scotch, and then this one zombiewon't stop following him around.A zombie AU spanning the length of the Regent's Canal.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 14
Kudos: 85
Collections: Tomarry Reverse Big Bang 2020





	heartbeat hills and valleys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to zombu: zombie au was such a brilliant concept, thank you for drawing it

_Either way, I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys. — Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies_

Because Harry's life is shit, the zombie apocalypse hits when he's on the Heathrow Express.

He, Ron and Hermione had just flown back from the giddy ecstasy of their grad trip in Italy, after days of staying up too late polishing off bottles of chianti, hiking while hungover and talking about everything and nothing while putting away prodigious amounts of pizza. Harry hadn't laughed as much in his entire life as he did in that first week.

Then the days started to take a strange turn. First came the disquieting news about a strange sickness was taking hold of the Italian capital. No one could verify the claims, which grew stranger by the day, then the hour. But Rome remained open and bustling and, aside from the errant hysteria, operated as per normal.

The trio were watching from a distance, from a quiet town in Tuscany where the hiking trails were good, when it was discovered that it wasn't just that some humans had apparently gone mad; they were _biting_ others.

Tuscany was scenic and peaceful and whatever bizarre happenings seemed impossibly far away, but Hermione had wisely twigged that something was not quite right. Governments were notoriously slow to respond, and all the while the stories grew wilder and more unbelievable, spreading like an oil slick on water, and they collectively decided that if Italy turned out to be some kind of epicentre, they had best head home.

Heathrow Airport was as packed and disorderly as ever. Throngs of international travellers jostled for space on the escalators, making noises of impatience at Customs, strolling idly through duty-free. Hermione was spritzing perfume on her wrists and rubbing them together; Ron was holding two full bags of tax-free liquor, nursing a cup of Costa coffee and tapping his foot at baggage claim.

Harry remembers queuing for the train bound for central London, thumbing through Twitter on his phone, distractedly registering some hysteria sandwiched between memes and adorable dog videos.

There are few things worse than fighting for your life on a narrow, high-speed metal container, crammed in with strangers who have collectively lost their minds and fiercely regretting not paying closer attention to social media.

The groans reach their ears first.

Harry looks up just in time to see a pair of mottled arms stretching out towards Ron, and experiences a moment of confusion so pure and innocent he will look back on it in the days to come with incredulity. Then he notices how, beneath the burst blood vessels of the eyes fixed on the back of Ron's head, how _blank_ that gaze is, and a wild, animalistic terror strikes his heart. Because he knows, by some primal instinct, that these are no ordinary creatures—and it is no ordinary sickness.

Greying fingers brush the top of Ron's ginger crown just as the other commuters behind him start to take notice, fearful noises distantly reaching his ears, and he would have frozen in shock if not for Hermione's quick thinking.

She grabs Ron's bag of tax-free liquor and smashes a bottle of whiskey—Ron uttering a shocked, pained noise like he's been physically hurt—and then hands it to Harry, neck-first.

Acting on instinct, Harry lunges forward so fast that his chest brushes the tip of Ron's nose, and shoves the jagged end with all his might into the zombie's face. It makes a terrible sound, glass smashing through bone and gristle. Blood spurts and runs down his fingers, his wrists. The sleeve of his jumper turns a deep, drenched red.

Beside him, with zero hesitation, Hermione hauls her oversized, peach-coloured Samsonite up and hurls it directly at the other one.

Someone screams, and then all hell breaks loose.

As if jarred into motion, commuters flee for the doors. One of them shoves Harry so roughly to get to the front of the carriage that he is forced to release his grip on the whiskey bottle as his side slams into the blunt edge of the hideous purple seats. For a few terrifying seconds, his vision whites out.

When he can see again, the zombie that was stabbed in the face is still moving, but more sluggishly—eventually it stops moving altogether. The other one staggers, crippled by the sheer weight of all of Hermione's toiletries and summer clothing and Italian souvenirs.

With quick reflexes, Harry yanks Ron upright and leaps over the seats, tugging Hermione behind him. Ron chances a backward glance and makes a gagging sound, but Harry has no time to spare.

He runs straight into the door at the end of the carriage. He tries it, jabbing the 'Open' button, prying at its seams, and it will not open.

"Let us out!" he roars, hammering on the glass, and then, when that doesn't work, begins to fling himself bodily against the doors.

"Mate," Ron says, breathing hard. "You'll hurt yourself."

"They can't have locked us out!" Harry shouts in disbelief, his throat closing up, but Hermione has already turned away from them both.

The other zombie has thrown the suitcase off—its left leg is bent at an odd angle, but it's still coming towards them. Behind it, the door at the other end yawns open.

He doesn't even need to tell them what he's thinking. None of them needs to breathe a single word.

Ron hauls the abandoned suitcases out from the luggage rack and braces his full weight against the improvised barrier. Behind it, Hermione reaches into the duty-free bag and hurls the last bottle at it. Her aim is true, shattering it completely in an explosion of glass and smoky peat, and then Harry darts forward with the plastic bag, wraps it around the creature's sodden head, and twists.

Its spinal column snaps with a sound that Harry has never heard before in his entire life. He shudders, stumbling back.

Hermione catches him, and Ron runs forward just as a third zombie emerges from the carriage threshold. Then a fourth. He slams his fist against the button on the side, and the door begins to slide shut, agonisingly slow.

"Bugger," Ron says, his voice only a little high. Then, without turning around, he adds, "Harry, grab what's left of my Glenfiddich from that zombie's face and pass it to me, would you?" 

Harry stares at him but does as he's told, and then watches numbly as Ron swipes and stabs, beating the undead back with remarkable aplomb.

The doors slide shut, and they are alone in their cabin, with two dead—properly dead—bodies.

"Oh god," Ron says, looking green. "Oh god, oh god, oh god."

"Ron," Harry says, grabbing his shoulders. "Ron, look at me."

Ron looks at him, eyes wide and rolling like a frightened horse.

"You managed to both help _and_ not puke on anything," Harry says. "Good job."

Ron stares at him. Then he cocks his elbow back and slugs him in the arm. Harry grins.

Crisis momentarily averted, they look at each other, still breathing hard.

"We need to get out of here," Hermione says.

She walks back to their seats, swaying almost imperceptibly. She pulls her Samsonite free with a look that is only slightly revolted, and unzips it. Wordlessly, Ron drags his suitcase towards her, and together they begin sorting through their necessities. Into their carry-ons go their clothes, passports, leftover granola bars, and all their cash. Everything else is discarded.

"What do you think happened to the rest?" Ron mutters. His face has resumed its pale colouring, but that's due to genetics and not mortal terror.

Harry shrugs, and Hermione shakes her head slightly. It's not worth thinking about.

The train starts grinding to a halt in the station. They looks up at each other, shouldering their backpacks, and when the exits open, they run.

Paddington station is an explosion of noise and colour, half of the commuters running pell-mell for the exits beneath the great domed roof, sunlight spilling from the skylights as they sprint out onto the road to stop cars and—improbably—flag taxis. The other half seem confused but guarded in the way all London commuters grow to be, but they too spill out onto the streets, carried by the wave of panic.

And then the shambling horde materialises on the platform, and it's chaos.

Hermione drags them both by their sleeves to the other end of Paddington station, and they have no time to grab any moderately useful items they might think to find before they burst out into the open air.

It's a punishingly hot day in August, one of those last summer days where the air seems almost liquified, heat seeping into every last crevice. Harry is sweating the minute he steps out.

"Where to?" Ron asked, panting. There's blood on his cheek. 

"The canal," Hermione orders, eyes darting about in a frenzied state, and they take off towards where the walking paths are hemmed in by the canal.

Suddenly a zombie tears away from the mob headed for the gantries, coming towards them at shocking speed. It gains on them in almost no time, while they blink stupidly in the bright sunlight, lost, still trying to regain their bearings, and bears down unforgivingly on Harry. Harry's shout of sheer horror alerts his friends—and several other zombies nearby, no doubt. Its weight is immense, and though it has not yet begun to decay, it smells of rot and gristle.

He cries out in a blind panic, holding it off with his hands. It claws ineffectually at him, and Harry has to keep shifting his grip so that it won't try to take a bite out of his hands. On the train, he had put on his Hogwarts jacket over his jumper, at Hermione's say-so, and thank god for that. They still can't be sure how transmission works, but the additional layer definitely makes it harder for zombie teeth to break skin.

There's a knife embedded in its chest—clearly, some poor unfortunate had stuck it in there and fled or been eaten—and in desperation, Harry wraps one hand around the slippery handle and thrusts upwards, impaling the creature from jowl to crown. It sags against him, hissing and spitting weakly, and then goes completely still.

It's a weekday, the mid-morning sun reflecting sharply off the enormous windows of the office blocks, as they dash past cafes and restaurants and the public art of two statues facing each other, and Regent's Canal is not as crowded as it could have been—small mercies. Nevertheless, there's a straggler or two that stumbles towards them. If not for the bloodshot eyes and greying skin, they might've been just another office-worker that had emerged from one of the glass-and-steel buildings after pulling an unwise all-nighter.

"Hermione," he calls behind himself anxiously as more and more come towards them, attracted by the noise and chaos of the station. The three of them back up against the water's edge, Harry holding his knife, Ron with the much-abused bottle of Glenfiddich.

Then, suddenly, Hermione disappears from his side.

"What are you doing!" Ron yells, as Harry hears the sound of feet hitting wood, the slosh of water against the sides of the canal.

"Trying to find one that's abandoned!" Hermione says, as she leaps deftly from barge to barge, those narrow, flat-bottomed boats that litter the canal, functioning as floating bookshops or cafes or homes that typically serve tourists and their like.

"There's no time!" Harry roars, swinging his knife in a wide arc. Soon, the starving zombies will realise their hunger is much stronger than their sense of self-preservation. "Just get one that's empty!"

"Harry," she says, pausing in her fretting to put her hands on her hips. Harry can't turn his head to see this, but he knows _exactly_ what she pose she's adopted. "This could be someone's _home._ " 

"Yes, and if they're not in the barge, they're most likely dead by now. Come _on,_ Hermione!"

"Fine!" she shouts back, ducking beneath the flap over the roof of one she has requisitioned. The zombies come closer, drooling eagerly.

"Get it started!"

"Yes, if I can find the bloody—ah!"

Harry glances back to see her holding up a set of keys that had fallen out of the engine box.

And then, blessedly, there is the sound of an engine roaring to life. He cheers weakly.

"Cover me," Ron says, as he kneels to untie the barge from its moorings.

The barge starts to pull away from the canal's edge, and Ron quickly climbs on board. Harry, doing his best to hold the undead at bay, follows suit once there's enough distance between him and the nearest zombie. The currents do the rest of the job, and then she revs the diesel engine.

They slowly part from the shore, and as the last zombie come close to the water, they hold their collective breaths, hands tightening on their weapons. But the zombie does not step in; it does not advance further.

"They can't swim," Ron gasps. He grabs Hermione and plants a noisy kiss on her cheek. "You mad _genius_."

And that's when Harry sees it.

At first glance it seems like an eerily still human, until Harry notices the unblinking, burgundy eyes, the bruise-like shadows beneath them. The zombie is standing on one of the cycling paths that looks over the canal, and there's something almost assessing about its gaze, as if it's contemplating the possibility of clearing that distance in a jump.

But no, zombies don't think. The past hour has taught Harry that zombies are an unflinching, unfeeling breed, only able to see as far as their next meal. They would just as soon devour a pregnant woman as a child.

This zombie is wearing a nice collared shirt, mostly white, with hardly any blood on it; it could've been a young intern at one of the office buildings nearby.

It stares at him with uncanny focus, something almost like interest flaring in those dead eyes. It doesn't move, does not drool or groan or make any sign that will characterise the undead in the days to come.

Harry quickly turns away, unnerved, as the boat continues down the Paddington basin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got really homesick for london while stuck at home during lockdown and somehow this fic grew into a little love letter to the city, to all the little things from jogging along the canal to weekly shops at waitrose to popping into the canalside pub for a midweek pint. it's all such incredibly ordinary stuff and yet something about it makes my chest ache in a good way
> 
> also writing this fic gave me a good excuse to finally watch cockneys vs zombies for Research Purposes and it was a complete riot
> 
> if you liked this and you like high school enemies to lovers aus, please consider checking out [parallel trenches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26235988/chapters/63857005), the other fic i'm writing for this year's big bang


End file.
